I am studying an alter crown for Yemoyá from the Santoriá religion. I’m studying this because I want to discover how the object is used, and how it differs from other crowns in the Santeriá religion and how it differs from the crowns in other Yoruba religions, as well as looking at the differences in the crowns at differing levels in the hierarchy and royalty within the gods. The crown is an important part to these religions and to the way that they are used within families and their altars, which is what makes studying the symbolism of the crowns so interesting. Through researching these questions, I will be able to help the reader understand the symbolism of the crown and what makes them so important as well as looking at the different types of crowns and how they differ in the different religions.

Crowns play a role in many of the religions and altars that we have been studying, so this connects my object and the questions I am asking about them perfectly as I am asking about how the crowns differ across the religions that we are studying. When we look at the religions that we have been studying we generally see the crowns in two different places, we either find them on altars as crowns for the soup tureen, or we find them being used as crowns for sovereigns.  “Crown, Ekiti, 19^th-20^th century. The conical beaded crown with veil symbolizes the inner spiritual head of the kind and links him with all his royal ancestors who have joined the pantheon of gods.”  (Drewal, Pemberton & Abiodun, p. 32) This is a demonstration of a crown symbol in another yoruba related religion, which could be used to show the reader the symbolism of the crown and what makes them so important in the religions.

To find information about crowns I will need to use many different resources as I am not just looking at one religion in particular. So, to find enough information I will be looking for articles about them, if I could find something that is written by an altar maker or someone who makes crowns that would be ideal. My secondary sources could be various books or other articles written about the altars or religions to help me to contextualize the types of crowns for that specific religion. If I could find a documentary that studies the altars that would also help to contextualize the altar crowns in relation to their importance with the other parts of the altars.

-Sam Brady